With almost 240 million mobile phone internet users currently, the United States is one of the largest mobile communication markets in the world. Over 270 million Americans are projected to use a smartphone by 2022. In fact, the United States is the third-most smartphone users worldwide, trailing only China and India. The demographic characteristics of smartphone users are changing. In 2015, 88 percent of teenagers, ages 13 to 17 have access to a cellphone, an increase from 37 percent in 2013. Finally, 91 percent of teenagers, ages 13 to 17, access the internet on cell phones, tablets and other mobile devices at least occasionally.
Accordingly, increasingly younger users enter the smartphone market each year. Some parents are still reluctant to provide smartphones to their children. Smartphones equipped with GPS give parents an ability to track their child's location at all times. Thus, location monitoring may incentivize parents to maintain a child's access to a smartphone.
Mobile carriers look for opportunities to increase both revenue and profits by providing new services. One of the needs families and individuals have is to be able to specify parameters related to location tracking. Anther need is for parents to have a system that determines the safety of a location by using on external data related to a child's current location. Thus, a customizable, criteria-based location tracking system that provides parents with a determination as to a relative safety of a geolocation visited by the child will positively affect mobile device usage growth.